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of Israel, which LaRouche has compared to the fascist regime
of Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, is allowed to dictate U.S.
policy, the very concept of international law will be a joke.
At the same time, if ruthless political action is taken by
the United States, simply to enforce what has been agreed
upon in the existing peace accords, the Netanyahu gang can
be sent packing. Any action the Israeli government is forced
to take, for example, to withdraw from the occupied territories
in the West Bank, will enrage the most extremist thugs in his
coalition, and bring the government down. That, as many
Palestinians realize, would be the quickest way to restart the
peace process.
Brits send terrorist
controller to Mideast
by Joseph Brewda
An item in the March 28 London Daily Telegraph, shows the
method that British Intelligence has used to keep the Mideast
in a continuous state of war or near-war, most recently through
fielding “Islamic terrorist” groups.
According to the report, the British government, which
nows chairs the European Union (EU), has appointed British
Foreign Service officer Alistair Crooke to be the EU “security
liaison” to the Palestinian Authority, headed by President
Yasser Arafat. His primary duty, the paper says, will be to
help the PA “control radical groups,” such as Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, responsible for suicide bombings targetting
Israeli civilians. Crooke will work out of the offices of the EU
special envoy to the Middle East, Miguel Angel Morantinos.
Left unsaid by the Daily Telegraph, is that Crooke is a
specialist in deploying terrorist organizations, and his real
function will be to supply Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu with the bloody terrorist massacres that Netanyahu needs, to continue to justify sabotaging the Oslo Accords. The target is not just the Palestinian Authority; it is
also the Clinton White House, whose efforts to bring peace
to the region threaten British domination. Crooke arrives on
the scene following Netanyahu’s defiant refusal to make any
concessions to U.S. envoy Dennis Ross on Israeli withdrawal
from the Occupied Territories, provoking rage and despair
that plays into British hands.
Portrait of a terrorist
Alistair Crooke is certainly well-qualified for his new job.
He personally oversaw the arming of the Afghan mujahideen
during 1985-87, according to British sources, when he was
vice counsel at the British Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan.
These were the days when Margaret Thatcher and George
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International
Bush paid out billions of dollars to fund and equip what they
called the mujahideen’s valiant fight against Soviet Communism. Crooke controlled one of the spigots, and built up extensive connections with the mujahideen leadership.
When the anti-Soviet phase of the Afghan war ended in
1987, Bush and Thatcher abruptly shut down their operation.
Cut off from funds and Western political support, the mujahideen, now termed Islamic terrorists, were dumped on the job
market. Many found their way back to their countries of origin, where they now lead Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad,
the Islamic Group, and other British-run terrorist organizations, which Crooke supposedly will be called upon to
counter.
During the period that the mujahideen were drifting back
to the Mideast, Crooke was transferred to Brazil and Colombia, where he handled terrorist organizations, and oversaw
the transfer of Chilean weapons to Mideast terrorist groups,
according to regional sources. Now he will return to the region, to reassume mujahideen control.
Crooke’s career as a terrorist controller has been aided by
his older brother, Lt. Col. Ian Crooke, former head of British
Special Air Services Counter-Terrorism Warfare Task Force.
SAS played a dominant role in training, arming, and leading
the Afghan mujahideen. Crooke’s task force played a major
role in training, arming, and leading terrorist groups, especially in the Middle East. In 1989, Prince Philip of Britain
and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands hired Crooke, then
officially retired from government service, to run the World
Wildlife Fund’s Operation Lock, allegedly established to protect the southern African white rhino from poachers.
South African court records show that under the cover of
training game wardens, Colonel Crooke fielded terrorists who
indiscriminately massacred supporters of Nelson Mandela’s
African National Congress, and of KwaZulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, to provoke violence between the two groups.
Thousands died as a result. This was per the British monarchy’s policy of blowing up South Africa through ethnic, tribal,
and racial violence. The same method is what Alistair Crooke
will bring to the Mideast.
Opportunities abound
Meanwhile, Netanyahu is ensuring that there are more
than enough provocations in place to spark renewed violence.
A Hamas operative found dead at the scene of a car bombing in Ramallah on March 29, in what was initially attributed
to the premature explosion of a suicide bomb, was actually
shot to death three hours before the blast, Palestinian officials
reported on April 1. Palestinian pathologist Jala Jabar told
Associated Press that the victim, Mohieddin Sharif, had died
from bullet wounds. The bomb in the car in which Sharif’s
body was placed, was later detonated by remote control, Palestinian police officials said, in an apparent effort to hide the
cause of death.
Sharif topped Israel’s most-wanted list, because he reportedly masterminded several suicide bombings. He was the desEIR
April 10, 1998
© 1998 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited.
ignated successor to the notorious Hamas master bombmaker, Yayyah Ayyash, whom the Israelis assassinated in
January 1996, provoking the Hamas February-March busbombing spree which paved the way for “strong-man” Netanyahu’s election that May. Predictably, Hamas Gaza leader
Abdel Aziz Rantisi threatened a renewed terror wave in response. “Hamas cannot forget its members,” he told AP, “and
they [the Israelis] have to understand that Hamas is in the
habit of taking revenge.”
British Army fuels
N. Ireland conflict
by Mary Jane Freeman
As the April 9 deadline for an agreement in the Northern
Ireland peace process approached, an extraordinary revelation appeared in the London Sunday Telegraph of March 29.
Under the headline “Assassination by Proxy—Army Set Up
Ulster Murders,” the Sunday Telegraph claimed to possess
copies of British Army intelligence “contact” forms, which
show that the Army infiltrated at least one agent into a loyalist
paramilitary group for the purpose of targetting republicans
and/or members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) for assassination.
Such collusion has long been suspected. Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, when asked about the Sunday Telegraph’s
exposé, said he was not surprised, since he had submitted
evidence of this sort to the British government long ago. If
the documents prove to be authentic, and the Irish Times’s
assertion that the secret Army unit involved, the Force Research Unit (FRU), “was disbanded in 1990 but was reconstituted and is still active in the North,” is correct, it raises the
question: Does British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government have two diametrically opposed policies on ending the
Northern Ireland conflict: a public official line of support for
the peace process, on the one hand, and a covert operation to
undermine it, on the other?
Murder for hire
The Sunday Telegraph’s feature recounts the recruitment
of Brian Nelson (Agent 6137), who had been a soldier in
the elite Black Watch counterinsurgency unit of the military,
to infiltrate the Ulster Defense Association (UDA), also
known as the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). The alleged
purpose of his insertion was to ensure “that UDA’s death
squads, instead of murdering Catholics indiscriminately,
would target only people involved in republican terrorism,”
according to the account. But, as the Sunday Telegraph
notes, “if the Army colludes in murder, it becomes indistinEIR
April 10, 1998
guishable from” terrorist groups.
Nelson was given personal information on the homes and
movements of republicans by the FRU, “which was used to
carry out assassinations.” The quality of his information led
to his advancement, to head UDA intelligence. Many details
of specific murders are given, but two statistics, based on the
paper’s review of the Army’s contact forms and Nelson’s
diaries, stand out. First, during the two years he was being
“handled” by the Army FRU, he was involved in 15 murders,
15 attempted murders, and 62 conspiracies to murder. Second,
the Army knew in advance of at least 92 cases in which the
UDA planned murders.
The most glaring instance of the Army’s foreknowledge,
was the attempted assassination of Sinn Fein elected official
Alex Maskey, a Belfast councillor. The contact forms show,
writes the Sunday Telegraph, that hours after an attempt was
made on his life by the UDA, Nelson called his handler to
report that Maskey “just missed death by 20 seconds.” The
handler replied, “If you were caught there was nothing we
could have done.” Nelson assured his handler he wouldn’t get
caught, and informed him that another attempt would be made
on Maskey’s life the following week. Knowing this, the FRU
made no effort to warn the councillor. The only thing that
saved his life is that he did not show up at the expected place.
In 1990, after another republican had been killed by the
UDA, a hue and cry went up. In an effort to justify the action,
the UDA published its intelligence report allegedly showing
that the victim was an IRA terrorist. The information the UDA
published, of course, had been provided by Nelson, who had
gotten it from the FRU. This was the first crack in the case. An
official inquiry was immediately initiated by a Royal Ulster
Constabulary (RUC) deputy. But, the inquiry ended after his
offices were set ablaze and the key suspect, Nelson, fled to
England. The fire was ruled an “accident,” and a report was
written absolving the Army; it stated that the collusion was
“neither widespread nor institutionalized.”
What is the Blair government’s role today?
After the Sunday Telegraph piece appeared, the Irish
Times’s seasoned security analyst, Jim Cusack, wrote that the
contact forms “are regarded as the first solid evidence that
the British Army colluded with loyalists in the murder of
republicans.” He added, “There has been strong circumstantial evidence to support this since the early years of the Troubles.” Reportedly, the FRU was disbanded after the 1990
investigation. However, Cusack wrote that “the Irish Times
has been told by senior loyalist sources that the British Army
is once again operating in a clandestine fashion.” These
sources told the newspaper that the current collusion is not
with the UDA-UFF, which has signed onto a cease-fire and
is represented in the peace talks, but rather, is with the Loyalist
Volunteer Force, a splinter group opposed to the peace process. If true, this is quite significant, in that it was the LVF
which went on a killing spree in January 1998, murdering
eight Catholics in the aftermath of the cold-blooded murder
International
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